The Jesus thing

The other day I happened to watch some clips of the TV coverage of Jesus and Mary a few months ago. As I said to a Christian friend, if you know them and have been to the seminars, the most gob-smacking thing was how easily the media can put any slant they like on what a person says.  I also thought that if I had seen it with no prior knowledge I reckon I too may have judged him as a dreadful man who was totally mad and of malicious intent. Sad really.  The few words they did show him saying were too brief to really allow an understanding of any concept, and a lot was made of people watching him in tears, in such a way as to suggest that they were being brow-beaten. One thing that gets to me is how easily we are all influenced by preconceived notions, by the judgement or persuasive words of others.

A couple of months ago, as a footnote to an assignment, I couldn't help but put forward an argument which still has as much meaning for me now. I was speaking to those who I felt had a firm belief in God, and perhaps equally firm, a belief that Jesus is God and that when he comes he will look and act very 'Godlike', which seems to me one important reason why they automatically reject the idea that a man on their TV screens could be Jesus.

Here's what I wrote:

 

I was reminded of how I feel about the Second Coming, given that as far as I know people base their beliefs exclusively on what they have read in the Bible and we know this was never meant to be read literally. I wonder if we are at times too specific about what we expect based on what we understand from the Bible.

What if the return of Jesus is not what we expect? Many have this idea, which they will justify with reference to scripture, that Jesus will return in glory, as God, and that they will be judged according to their lives and works, or something like that. But what if we have misinterpreted scripture through its translations and the change in meaning that happens to words over the centuries? Did Jesus in the original translations ever say he was God? Or just the son of God, and that we are all brothers and sisters, also children of God. He constantly referred to God as his Father. Saying "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life" could as easily be said by, say, the first person who had found the Way, The Truth and Eternal Life and wanted to teach others how to do likewise. Could it be that following his death people came to believe he must be God, through hearsay of his life and works, or through not understanding perfectly what he was getting at, or what was meant by those who wrote the scriptures?

So perhaps we could be open to the possibility that Jesus will return as a man, still a child of God, still chosen to be the messenger of truth, albeit the one who has developed the closest relationship with God by virtue of his love for God and his brothers and sisters. Perhaps we could evaluate those who proclaim themselves to be Jesus on the amount of love and truth they convey, be open to more than the one widely accepted idea of a God returning in full and unmistakable glory, accepting humbly that we may not know the Jesus of the New Testament as well as we think we do, knowing also that our Father is a master of the unexpected. Many in the first century were not convinced that a humble Nazarene carpenter could possibly be the Messiah and only those without firm preconceived notions and those sincerely seeking the Truth however indigestible were able to see in him their Messiah, their messenger of truth. How many at the Second Coming will make the mistake that the majority of those who heard about and met Jesus in the First Century made? Here is surely a matter about which we could pray to God, to show us in our hearts who the Messiah is when he comes – perhaps like a thief in the night.

Anger and me

I'm quite demanding when it comes to being heard by men. And I feel that I'm not unlike several female ancestors; there's this feeling I believe we share that in order to muffle my sense of inferiority to men I want to argue my point – and I want to win.

This year I have been doing a course necessary to allow me to work as a hospital chaplain in Queensland public hospitals. This has involved a great deal of theory work as well as visiting patients as a student chaplain. Before embarking on the course I made it very clear to the course director and coordinator about my beliefs regarding God, and Jesus not being God, and, as it was a multi-faith course, it was felt not to be an impediment to my participating. I was cautioned not to proselytise and readily agreed as I too want to correct this tendency in me (or so I tell myself!)

I like writing; I feel I can express myself better than when I speak. I have enjoyed doing my written work during the course; reflecting on patient interactions and on course material is quite satisfying now I understand a little bit about the principles of love and truth as taught by Jesus and Mary. And after years of uncertainty about the truth, I find it pretty exciting to discuss what I finally feel very sure about.

But in the last few days I have been made aware that I have upset a few people. One assignment in the Ethics module asked that I choose two or three people from my parish or any other large group who impressed me as examplars of good health, describe them, commenting on whether they have any health problems as well as strengths and what impresses me about them. My choice was easy. I wrote about Jesus and Mary as I believe that they are the two healthiest people on our planet at this time.

I don't think I will mind if I am asked to leave the course, feeling somewhat unsure about whether I am benefiting anyone in my role as hospital chaplain. I'm not worried about upsetting people by saying what I believe to be the truth. But is there an angry component in here for me? The lecturer who marked the assignment and reacted strongly to what I said and then reported his concerns to the course director was a man who irritated me because he would not allow free discussion during his classes. My father was a man who held strong, and in my opinion often bigoted, views and I very much feared his rage should anyone dare to contradict him.

I looked forward to responding to the concerns voiced by the director. I wanted to point out that I had answered the question accurately and truthfully; I wanted to justify my position and I wanted to win the toss. I didn't want to use this opportunity to feel my long-held anger at men because I don't want to feel inferior. It may be that this anger is why I don't mind upsetting others when I speak my truth, which makes it, interestingly, an unloving thing to do. As always, the question comes back to: what is my motivation in speaking the truth?

And when it came down to writing the letter, on re-reading it I found I had been almost completely conciliatory. True, I had initially said what was on my mind, but then I'd gone back and taken out anything that might result in their being angry at me. And I'd couched everything in the most politically correct way you can imagine. Interestingly, all it did was increase my resentment towards those running the course.

It occurs to me that there's no running away from my anger. I can write and re-word and distract myself (I tried four times unsuccessfully to get through to a government body on the phone after writing my letter, waiting ages on hold and having to listen to that same old tune over and over!) and whinge to my friends about the issue all I like, but in the end that nubbin of anger still sits in my belly. Reminding me that there is only one effective way to remove it permanently.

Teaching and me

When in January I first decided to write a blog I was quite afraid of 'being' out there' with my thoughts. Now I wonder if it has become more about my need to feel approval. My need to 'teach', to feel gratification that I changed another's life in some small way. Not that the teaching itself is a problem, only that my self-esteem depends on this.

Yesterday I became quite agitated when watching a person using a chainsaw. I'm afraid of power tools and am often corrected for using them unsafely myself, despite which, watching someone else do so, I couldn't help myself from pointing out what they were doing wrong and advising on 'the correct method'.

Well Laws of Attraction being what they are, I managed to pick someone who (also) had a big issue with being told what to do. But I kept telling myself that I was justified in doing what I did, that it was 'a safety issue' and in fact it was my duty to do so.

It wasn't until hours later, having recognised I was angry and let it out a bit on the long drive home, that I saw things in a different light. Perhaps my agitation was really covering my unmet need, my strong desire to feel better about myself by showing someone something I knew. What I want to happen is that I show them and they express humble gratitude and I walk off feeling good about myself. And my internal turmoil was all about my not getting what I needed in that situation.

I've taken pride in teaching my kids. How to read, ride a bike, drive a car, play the piano, the violin, how to solve a maths problem, write an essay, pretty much anything I could (even when I was a bit ordinary when it came to doing those things myself!). For years I've felt good about this teaching thing. But my kids haven't; in fact I'm probably single-handedly to blame for them not wanting to play any musical instrument, and this despite what I feel is considerable natural talent in some of them.

That's pretty bad. And pretty shocking that it has all been driven by my need to feel that I am a 'good teacher'. I tell myself I'm doing a good thing but my motivation is self-serving; I have to get approval not for being who I am but for what I can do.

So perhaps my blog-writing motivation needs to be revisited. It will be wonderful one day when I have dealt with all my needs, have felt remorse for what the kids and others have been put through, and talk, write, teach for the joy of it, no strings attached.

A Shameful Truth

I woke this morning from a dream; we'd been travelling round in the old brown van (unregistered, unwarranted) in New Zealand on some kind of a holiday and were just about to lend it to someone for their use but thought better of it, seeing as they could get into trouble for driving it. And I suddenly realised that my dream was reminding me of my using the public roads without paying for them, given that the van was unregistered. It felt yukky. I recognised that thing in me that wants something for nothing, that loves a bargain, that has even stolen little things when I was little. I belong to the local woodcraft society not primarily to make friends and share my joy of working with wood, but in order to have access to a lot of equipment for a nominal membership fee. I volunteer for a few things, not primarily to help, but because of the freebies that come my way or because it helps me to feel good about myself. I sing in the choir, hardly at all for the joy of singing (it's all quite difficult and challenging for me) but in order to become a better singer. And on it goes.

And I'm pondering about my relationship with God in this light. How much, when I pray to be loved, do I want 'something for nothing', and why do I really want God's love? I think there are many facets to this. Somewhere in the answer is the pure desire to become closer to God just because God is God and I am me, because I do know that little bits of love come through at times. However I have to admit that I also see having God's love as such a bargain too. In theory I ask, God supplies (all for free), and I find all the obstacles in my life much easier to negotiate because, for a little while at least, I feel good about myself.

And here I see a lot of impure desire in me. I want God's love in order to 'look good, feel better' as the poster says. And I tell myself, with God's love in me I can be so much freer and more effective in my own life. But this freedom requires first that I am truthful about my own darker side.

I am heavily 'of the world' in this respect. We are taught here on earth that everything costs money, everything must be accounted for. Except air, but how long before we learn how to charge for that? And as long as I subscribe to that belief, as long as I try to manipulate my own “I'll do this for you if you do that for me” I believe I cannot graduate to receiving freely of God's abundance. God's laws are the opposite to man's laws when it comes to abundance but it seems to me that first I must make peace with man's laws before the universe deems me eligible to receive freely, without the expectation that I do anything in return. Anything, that is, except feel gratitude. And that's something else I have in short supply, again because I've been taught that everything costs money.  I feel uncomfortable if I'm given a gift unless I feel I've 'earned' it or I can respond with another gift (the size and amount of which I carefully measure...)

Jesus taught us in the first century that the person who buries his stash for safekeeping is the one who loses out in the end. He also teaches that it is vital that we take total responsibility for our own feelings. And I will pray to God to help me feel more and more deeply about this miserly demanding aspect of me, and ask for help to go through whatever anger I have at those who I think charge 'too much', all the fear I have at being left bereft, and so it goes... I want to be free of this rather nasty stain that seems so firmly stuck on me.

Yoga and me

I went to a yoga class yesterday morning. I've done this perhaps half a dozen times in my life, maybe less. It's a sobering experience to see how inflexible I am and I felt fairly despondent through most of it, thinking “if my body is supposed to show me the things I don't want to believe about myself, how rigid I must be!”

I don't know much about the body's manifestation of denied emotion, but I couldn't avoid the thought that once upon a time, years back, I may have been able to do all those odd poses and feel balanced and comfortable. There were people my age in the room who seemed to manage; what has happened to me? I've had plenty of physical activity in my life, so it's not that.

And I couldn't get away from the nagging thought that I've opted to become rigid in many ways. I also saw a local school production of Fiddler on the Roof yesterday (it was so good I went twice!) It's a musical, beautifully telling the story of how Tevye, the Russian Jewish father who holds his faith and cultural tradition very dear to him, is repeatedly challenged. He talks to God in the most lovable way, asking to be rich, to be cared for, bringing his daily complaints, praying in a way that feels so real. And on two of three occasions he opts to go against his beloved tradition and makes decisions based on his love for his daughters. On the third occasion he says something like: “My back can only bend so far before it will break...” and the wrongness of his decision to not bend further is heartbreaking.

Well, in yoga my back doesn't bend far at all. I'm a long way from touching my toes. Is it possible that I'm holding onto a lot of beliefs that fly in the face of love? Like Tevye, I debate the pros and cons of every decision. I suppose I fear my back will break too, that if I don't do what I've been taught is right then I will suffer a lot of pain.

I'm surprised to realise how strong my own internal 'tradition' is, how much I fear that acting out of love will bring me unbearable pain. I continue to be afraid to love.

I was married 29 years ago today. I could perhaps talk with God about how what I've just written will help me see my own inflexibility, my own choices to not feel pain rather than to be open to love.

Self-talk

Recently it's been suggested to me that I open myself to the influence of many spirits, most of them unhelpful when it comes to my making my way closer to God. I suppose for most of my life I would have been vaguely OK with the idea of a guardian angel but not much else in spirit form; however the way I see life and the universe and all that is changing. And the longer I sit with the idea that there are many spirits dropping thoughts into my head, expanding on the seeds of thoughts that started in me somewhere along the way, the more sense it makes to me.

But I don't enjoy this. And I wonder if it is part of the reason I've kept so busy through my life; because when things quieten down, off goes my mind, clackety-clack. And there are all sorts of opposing thoughts, quite a raft of assorted spirits, or so I now believe. Things like: I'm a good mother, I'm a lousy mother, I'm fast and efficient, I'm slow and ponderous and never seem to get anything done, I'm clever, I'm so stupid, I'm better than you, I'm so hopeless I'll never get to be anything near where you are, I'm not bad-looking for my age, my face is an ugly mass of wrinkles... and on and on.

Why is this happening in me? For the simple reason that I allow it. I like the positive thoughts because I feel momentarily good. However this fulfils the definition of addiction; it never lasts, I continue to need to hear the comments (whether they be in my head or from others) in order to stay feeling good, and I feel pretty bleak when they're not there. What about the negative comments? What do I get from them? Well I can feel awfully sorry for myself in this space, beat myself up a lot - with the faulty thinking that if I do that then maybe God won't.

For better or worse, I still see my mother as a beautiful person, a feisty, joyful, naughty leader-of-the-pack child underneath the painfully devout prayerfulness I grew up with. And she did a lot of this. Prayer, yes, but also lots and lots of negative self-talk. And I only need to look at her to be reminded that beating myself up is actually not the way to seeing myself as God sees me, doesn't make me any happier and isn't exactly fun for people around me either.

And I wonder if it's as simple as just stopping doing it. Just stopping.

But, like any other addiction, just deciding to 'stop' doesn't take away the gnawing discomfort. But it's a start, and I know where to go from there.....

Talking to God

I've often thought that just as no two people are the same, we all have a unique relationship with God. Despite knowing better, I find I continue to judge myself as 'better than' or 'worse than' another person and in no area is this more painful than when I imagine or hear how others are talking to God and look at how that is for me.

Because what I want, what I've always wanted, is what Jesus described as his relationship with God in the first century when he was little, a daddy who was always there, who he shared everyday moments with as he went through his play and his work.

What I have, and what I often forget to be grateful for, is a sure knowledge that God not only exists but She provides me with myriad little treats. An unbeliever might put all these down to chance or randomness but for me the sight of a butterfly or a woolly cloud, the smell of a rose, the silver evening light on the still ocean, the fantastic photography in the opening minutes of a murder mystery I watched the other night... I could go on and on. These all tell me of God's desire to give me joy.

But I hanker for more. I not only want evidence of God in my life, I want to know God in the way that one can only know another through conversation and exchange of feelings. And in the last couple of weeks, while my previous dark cloud of almost-despair seems to have lifted, I have missed feeling God close to me. Brooke Fraser describes it exactly for me in her song 'Faithful'

There's distance in the air and I cannot make it leave
I wave my arms round about me and blow with all my might
I cannot sense you close, though I know you're always here
But the comfort of you near is what I long for

And I remember that the only sure way of 'getting back on track' to God is to pray.

Sounds easy? Not so at all I find. Many months ago I learned 'The Prayer' by heart and have never regretted it because it enables me to choose a relevant phrase from it at whim, no matter what I happen to be doing. But if I start at the beginning I get bogged down very quickly. I have this addiction to thinking which is so deep and longstanding that before I know it I'm off on a tangent, away from God.

And I blame myself for not sticking to my resolve. Ho hum. I forget that I'm not talking to God because deep down I don't want to talk to God. Wow, that's interesting. Here's me, hanging out to connect to the One who loves me more than anyone else ever could, more than I can imagine, and I don't want to talk to Him?

And I realise that no I don't, I'm so discouraged about all my attempts at connection feeling like they're just bouncing off bullet-proof glass, I'm frustrated and angry at God, and just underneath that I feel so hopeless, that it's just all too hard, I'm alone and will never find my way in.

Then in my head I hear 'just say all that to God, less talking about how it is, just talk to God.

OK. “God, I'm very grateful for the good things you send my way but I'm also really frustrated and despondent about how you keep me at arm's reach. I want you, I want to be with you much more than I want your presents.” (And the childhood image rises of my dad holding us at arm's length in jest, his palm on our foreheads, and inviting us to grab him or punch him or in some way connect to his body, but of course our arms and legs were too short....)

And the moment I talk to God, really talk about how I feel, not just words, it all changes within me. I'm back to feeling again and even if it's not exactly joy, it's so much better than walking around feeling disconnected.

Which takes me to the chorus of Brooke Fraser's song...

When I can't feel you, I have learned to reach out just the same
When I can't hear you, I know you still hear every word I pray
And I want you more than I want to live another day
And as I wait for you maybe I'm made more faithful.

A letter to God

I wrote this letter to God a couple of days ago in a moment of clarity after expressing some anger at God. I still feel very much like I'm at the bottom of a difficult mountain to climb, and unsure of who I am and how to proceed from here, but on re-reading it this morning I felt that there was enough truth in it (and enough fear of negative feedback!) for me to go ahead and post it.

14 April

Dear God,

As you well know, I've had a pretty crap last 24 hours, actually a pretty crap 2 ¾ years. But just now I'm feeling a bit more 'myself' or at least I hope it is me. It was suggested to me yesterday that since I was very small, since before I can remember, I've allowed assorted spirits to direct my life and that resulted in me feeling awful, very 'yuk' inside, and also very afraid, not knowing where to go from here.

Because I was wondering what was 'real me' and what was not, and feeling I'd been taken for quite a ride, studying for most of my life on behalf of some spirit, perhaps taking up all sorts of pastimes to satisfy someone else's addiction, denying my own feelings and in some unintentional way choosing to feel someone else's.

One thing I queried was my long-held view of you, which is both the punishing God of my early childhood and the loving-father God of my teens and beyond. I've not questioned why I might have two opposite versions of how I see you until now, but when I ask myself which God my very small self believes in there is no question in my mind that it is the punishing God. And I'm left wondering if in fact the other version is just what some spirits (and I) would like me to believe.

Why? Because when I see you as a loving tender parent I can be a lovable little girl who feels actually quite sad but knows her Father won't get angry or make her feel bad about herself.

And for a long time I've retreated to this position, telling myself I would learn to trust you and love you and in time I would feel your love for me too.

But I'm still waiting. It strikes me that I've been waiting all my life. My little boy age about two was once in the bedroom holding up a large poster that had started falling off the wall while he was playing, calling out to me to come so that the poster would not be damaged as it fell. But then I heard no more and, being preoccupied (with less important things!) I assumed the situation had sorted itself. However after several minutes I heard his undemanding gravelly voice calling out, 'I'm waiting and waiting' and hurried in to see him quietly holding up the poster as best he could. I still feel the pain of how he must have felt in there, wondering why his mummy would not come to help him. And I guess that is my pain, waiting for you to love me.

But I have learned to wrap this in a variety of covers: zoning out for much of my life, but over the last few years increasingly indulging in self-pity and self-blame etc and so now I notice that I spend a lot of my time feeling quite heavy, struggling to do what I feel I have been taught is the Right Thing.

And I feel sure this heavy feeling hasn't gone for good but this afternoon I thought maybe that the truth is that the Real Me is very angry at what I still believe is you as God-the-punisher and that the other view of you is perhaps only a borrowed idea, not my own really. So I set off to see if I could express some anger. Actually I only got as far as being angry that I 'had to' do this anger stuff, angry that again I was 'having' to do something I didn't want to do.

But I notice that my head is clear for now, and it feels quite a bit like I'm me again. Still with lots and lots of anger to get through I know, but not bogged down, and definitely not feeling like I want to sit on your lap and be your little girl – which is a surprisingly good feeling.

Because my sense is that I've been kidding myself into believing that you will only make me feel good. But now I see that that's impossible while there are painful truths about myself I have yet to acknowledge. It makes much more sense that the real you (who neither punishes nor helps us gloss over the truth) has arranged the universe in such a way that the more truthful I am about myself the more real I feel, the less 'heavy'.

So I guess I'm just warning you that I want to get stuck into this feeling of anger I have at you - and at the world. I haven't wanted to pay it attention until now, judging myself for not being a 'good little girl', but at the moment I see it as the 'truth' I hold that you've been waiting for me to offload. And while I stay with this goal I have a feeling that I may not feel particularly loved by you but I will feel much more myself and clear-headed than I've been for a while now.

I will be asking for your help to be angry at you! And I hope to remember that waiting to feel your love for me while I deny the truth of how I really feel is not somewhere I want to return to.

Love

Karen

Self-pity versus self-love

This is an excerpt of a letter to a friend; I thought I'd put it out there in case anyone else is in the same boat and the spirit message is helpful to them too:

"I visited a friend who's been into psychodrama the other day because she was happy to do it with me.  So there we were, her telling me to choose a time when I was little and set the scene.  It was play-stuff and easy for me to get in to (would you believe that inside this cool calm exterior has always been someone who likes playing pretend games with little kids!).  Anyway I randomly chose the age of three and constructed this scene of me being outside (where I felt safe from people) and the rest of the family all inside this rather dark house.  I didn't see anything wrong with that but Mary raised her eyebrows a bit!  Anyway on we went and the story developed into my losing my dolly Elisabeth and how I felt.  I've been there before and know there's still stuff around that, but since then I've been thinking more of asking the little girl in me how she feels at different times of the day, which is quite interesting and surprising.  Makes me realise how much I override acting on how I'm feeling with my 'need' to do something I think I want to do but which is partly, if not wholly, driven by my fear of what judgement, or some variation on that theme.

I was writing in the book that I use for imagining dialogues with spirits, wanting to clarify this sudden feeling I had that perhaps my difficulty feeling remorse was related to my choosing not to love myself, somehow that this not-feeling how I really feel also makes it harder for me to feel how others feel.  This is what came back:

When you have these thoughts, be aware that we are trying to guide you with messages, pictures, memories etc and also that your own filters of damage and your allowance of unhelpful spirit influence will affect the purity of what you receive.  So look carefully at what you believe is being conveyed and examine it for evidence of love and truth - or otherwise.  So in the example above, where it is true that you have little love for yourself, little feeling of connection with 'little Karen' as was shown so clearly yesterday with Mary and Hugh, you also know that you very easily fall into the error of self-pity. 

Loving yourself is very far from pitying yourself.  Loving yourself is all about allowing yourself to feel.  Spirits around you are very focussed on your not doing this and constant prayer to God, sincere prayer where you want to embark on feeling the feelings you had as a small child, is needed to lessen the spirit influence.

Once you are able to connect to your own very suppressed childhood pain you will have less difficulty in feeling remorse for your own children.  Pray for help to feel anything at all, connect to feeling rather than hardening to it, and know that your childhood fears and pain etc are being activated.  Do this without self-pity; do not rush to comfort the little child in you, or to shame her with thoughts of disapproval and self-ridicule, but embrace her as she opens to her pain, as God does to you.

When I want guidance 'from above' all I do is imagine what they might be saying to me, and generally the conversation starts taking a bit of a life of its own.  At the time it feels just like I'm talking to myself but usually when I re-read it there is much that I find very helpful.  So, I'm not for a moment suggesting that this is a 'pure' message and if it doesn't feel right to you, let that be your guide.  And let me know if you want to!

The Giving Thing

I think I've mentioned before how I've come to really value the time before dawn, when the thoughts that come to me are much clearer. They're passing thoughts but if I jot them down or get up and type then usually what emerges is something very helpful for where I'm at.

The simple truth I realised was that if we approach our lives with an attitude of wanting to give rather than wanting to get, well it's an almost immediate recipe for happiness! Though of course the motivation for giving must be loving rather than self-serving.

For example, I started out in life, as most of us do, working after school and in the holidays at a low-paid job and I did this for the money. And money would give me the freedom to choose, and I would be happy, and all that.

But it doesn't take a genius to notice that when I work only in order to receive the perks or to get a paycheck, when there is nothing in the work I actually do that I enjoy, there's a large chunk of unhappiness in my life. Not only that, funnily enough I'm more likely to get asked to leave, probably more for my attitude than for my incompetence. Unless of course everybody in the workplace has the same attitude – which is a depressing thought to say the least.

And the same principle applies to other areas in my life. If I am practising my music or craft and my primary aim is to get better at it so that I do not have to feel ashamed, it becomes hard work and my desire to do it drops away very quickly. If I take up an occupation or community service that does not pay me and my primary aim is not to give something to others, then I will find I don't enjoy it all that much, despite the perks I may receive. If I embark on a sexual relationship and my primary aim is not to give my partner the gift of sex, then I will certainly feel resentment, if not at the time then at some time later.

These examples open up small Pandora's boxes of their own I think. And as with every Pandora's box, the temptation is to shut the lid quickly and run away, but the challenge is to look in, feel the feelings locked in there if I'm game. Take the paid work example: even if there's a lot I like in my job, I have worked out that if I feel very tired at the end of the day there was actually a lot going on during the day that I didn't feel happy about but that I wasn't facing. For example, I hated meetings. I saw them as talk-fests and told myself I was far more effective by working at the coal-face than by just talking about doing that. But what I was doing was telling myself I was better than others, my contributions far more valuable – and ignoring my own discomfort at my feelings of inadequacy when with a group of people, all of whom deep down I felt I needed to impress. No wonder I was tired at the end of the day.

And if I am spending time with music or a hobby, and I'm not loving the process, just asking myself why will soon show me more truth about myself. On any given occasion it may be that I am afraid of being punished (by 'God', for not using my so-called talents) or of being judged as not-very-good by others, or that I am actually working on it in the hope of glory, entertaining dreams of high praise. Clearly my motive in what I'm doing then is not to give something beautiful to the world but to get something for my efforts.

If I am a volunteer of some kind in the community and I find the fun is going out of it, it may not be that I dislike giving my time and expertise, but the lack of enjoyment is a clear indicator that my giving has strings attached. Am I perhaps in it for the public recognition? Or is there a part of me that needs another's gratitude in order to feel good about myself? Am I perhaps trying to please my own inner voices, the 'parents' I have carried within me all these years?

What about sex? To be truthful, in my life I have been open to having sex for these reasons: because I was afraid of rejection; because I felt that I would be judged as a cock-teaser if I didn't; because I felt I'd hurt the man and that having sex would be a kind of apology, that it would redress the balance; because I believed it was expected of me in our relationship and I didn't want to feel guilty about withholding sex, and there may be more reasons as well. And somewhere in there, but not that often, I have had sex because I wanted to share something beautiful, just have fun with someone I cared about deeply and feel the joy and freedom in my body like a little kid would.

So for me this early morning thought, that only giving as a pure act of love will bring me happiness, has me resolving to look at everything I do, ask myself if I'm really enjoying it, and if not why not? I will notice a lot of sobering truths about myself, my desire for praise and recognition, my need to feel I am a good person, and so on. Or like Pandora, I can hasten to close the lid quickly.

Interestingly, in the myth, the only thing that didn't escape the box was Hope. I rather like the idea of leaving the lid open, allowing a little hope through, a stepping stone to faith that greater happiness is just around the corner....

Letter to my mother

Dear Mum,

It's time we had a talk. I know you are not going to listen now but I'm saying it anyway. I'm writing it down for you so that if you decide at some time in the future to hear what I'm saying all you have to do is go back and read this.

In many ways that you and others in your family don't want to remember, you had a very bad time of it when you were very young. I understand this and I really feel for you but I won't talk much about it just yet. What I do want to talk about is me, how you affected me when I was very young.

To start with, before I was conceived you were already feeling overburdened with two little children who were not at all easy to care for in a strange place where you had no family of your own to support you (apart from dad), where you had to learn to speak the language and make do with what little you had, and where you felt very much under pressure to have your children look good, to avoid feeling judged by your own family and to help you feel better about yourself as a mother. And perhaps Marjorie was a handful, and Stephen was covered in eczema so that he was miserable and cried much of the time, and this was very very hard for you.

So that when you became pregnant with me you may have felt some love towards me but you certainly felt even more overburdened and afraid of how you would cope. And after I was born, you had John, who was too thin, which, you will not want to accept this but it is true, was because you were too overwhelmed with everything else to love him enough, and then Anne Mary where again, you know yourself you were so miserable and overburdened you prayed for God to take her.

And much of what I felt from you from the moment I was conceived was that I was a burden. I felt your unhappiness and your fear that you were being judged by your own mother and yours and dad's family in Holland for not being a good enough mother, that is, for your children reflecting that you weren't a very good mother, and not knowing any better I felt it was all because I was not good enough. You even used to say to us that all you wanted was for us to be good.

And I tried every moment to live up to your impossible standards of what a good child should be. I tried to write poetry, I tried to play the piano, I tried to be clever like your family, I said my prayers all the time just like you did, I tried to help you with the younger children and remember being called a Little Mother (and much of this was to please you), I went to drama and Girl Guides which I hated, but I never felt like I was good enough.

I hated being with other children (except my brothers and sisters) because I felt so unwanted and so unsure of myself, carrying this same feeling that I had from when I was first conceived right through my life. Any time I have ever been in a new situation with other people I have felt afraid and out-of-place and very unsure of my acceptance, just as I was when I was born. And I have tried very hard to be good and do what I felt was expected of me so that I might get some approval.

Because what I felt coming from you was your anger and disapproval. You will deny this but every time you withdrew into your own world with your sadness or your feelings of inadequacy, it felt to me that you were pulling away from me, that you didn't like the person I was; every time you were hard on yourself for not doing a good enough job, it felt to me that no matter how hard I helped you I was never good enough. I tried so hard for your approval because that was the nearest I could get to what I really wanted, your love.

I have spent my life being afraid of your anger and disapproval; this is why I so desperately wanted to leave home as soon as I could. You may find it hard to believe but even after I grew up, I was afraid of how you would feel about me, and kept trying to live my life so that you wouldn't judge me badly. I had an abortion and never told you, in large part because I was so afraid of how you would judge me as sinful and I would never be able to hold my head up again.

And somehow along the way, I became just like you and many others in your family. I protected myself from my own feelings of constant fear by becoming very judgemental of others, especially women, especially people who I think are less intelligent than I am. Because judging others doesn't feel as bad as being afraid all the time. But doing that is really just a form of being angry at others. So I am angry at all women and all men who don't make me feel good about myself.

This is not a good way to be; this badly gets in the way of my being close to God, no matter how much I pray. God is waiting for me to learn to love all her children, not be angry with them, and until I let go of the stubborn feelings in me that I know better than others, that I don't want to be told what to do, I'm pushing against a brick wall that I have created between me and God. You have that brick wall too mum, and so do many in your family. We don't want to be shown the truth of how we are inside, we prefer to tell ourselves that we are strong and intelligent and loving and kind – and be angry at anyone who suggests we might be anything else.

You might say that you have never thought of yourself as intelligent and it is true that you have always told the world that you are stupid and useless and 'no good'. But this is only what you have learned to believe of yourself, a mask you learned to put on in the hope that others would be kind and sympathetic towards you, in your own sad search for the feeling of being loved. You well know that underneath that you are very intelligent and strong – and angry. And it is your anger and your strength that I feared as a child who needed your protection, and what I still fear as if I were that small child.

I didn't understand all this when I had my own children and without realising it, ended up doing to them, the girls especially, exactly what was done to me. And I deserve the anger they feel towards me for making them feel not good enough and unloved for who they were. And I suspect that that is what happened to you too.

But it won't change anything to just say it was not my fault. Even though it wasn't my fault, I'm no longer a child and I can undo what harm is in me. I know how to do this; it isn't easy because it involves feeling all of the pain and shame and grief I avoided feeling in my childhood by withdrawing (just as you did mum) and feeling angry and judgemental.

And it will happen in layers. First I will pray for help to go back and feel all the fear in me when I was very little and you were angry or not available to me emotionally. And when all that fear of your anger is gone from me, when I'm no longer afraid to express my own anger, I will pray for help to do that, somewhere safe so it no longer hurts anyone else. Because what I now see I've been doing all my life is being angry at anyone who opposes me, especially if they are a female, even though I didn't recognise that that was what I was doing.

And when all the anger leaves me I expect I will cry and cry in the way I feel I never allowed myself to cry when I was younger because I was so busy being a good little girl. And when all that sadness has left me then I will be a good little girl without even trying, and I so look forward to that.

Love

Karen

A Fairy Story

(I thought this might make a children's picture book if someone came along to illustrate it with cute colourful pictures!)

Once upon a time there was a very little girl who liked to play – and dream, and just do nothing at all. She liked to get on the swing and go high, feeling the wind on her face, her hair blowing back on her head, or just dangle under the tree, gently rocking with the dying movement of the swing. It felt good to see everything whizzing past, and just as good to move slowly above the ground watching everything slow down. She sometimes imagined that she was the very centre of the whole universe, that she was really the most important princess that ever was, and that everyone else knew that but they were keeping it a secret from her for now. But she knew it anyway, up there on her swing; she could feel the whole world was hers to play with whenever she wanted it.

She also liked to climb trees. She liked the feeling of being strong enough to get to the very top, of how her eyes and arms and legs would do anything she wanted them to, and she loved to look out over the tops of the other trees, and balance on the topmost branches, a little bit afraid but also sure, in a way, that nothing bad would happen to her.

Often she would play with her brothers and sisters. They would invent games and form teams and go out into the bush and frighten each other for fun, or just plan and giggle and explore together.

But she also liked to be alone. This was her dreaming time and she could dream for hours. In fact, her mother used to call her a dreamer. Her mother also used to say that when she herself was younger people had called her 'Dopey Dora' and the little girl wondered if people thought she was dopey too when she was alone dreaming.

Her mother worked very hard. She was always working, because the house and the children had to be clean and tidy, and she had lots of children, and the meals had to be cooked and ready for the father when he came home from his long day of hard work too. All the children had jobs to do, even our little princess (she knew that they couldn't treat her like the princess she was because it was a secret) but they still had time to play.

The mother didn't seem to have any time to play. She was up cooking breakfast before anyone else and sitting up adding together numbers after the children went to bed. She wanted everything to be just right, and the little girl didn't spend much time around her mother because it felt like things were never just right for her, and the little girl felt guilty that perhaps she should help her and in this way make her happy.

But no matter; it seemed like the mother could never be happy, so the little girl stayed away from her so she could be happy on her own. However as she grew, she felt more and more guilty when she wasn't helping her mother, so going away to be happy never worked out quite as she expected. And she found that, like her mother perhaps, she could squash her feeling of guilt by doing things. She learned to keep herself very busy, reading and knitting (often both at the same time) and going for long walks and building things from materials she found around the place, and spending time with her friends away from her own home. But whenever she stopped to do nothing, or whenever she started to play as she had when younger, she could not avoid feeling guilty that she wasn't doing something useful.

This little girl grew up, as little girls do. For as long as she could remember, she had wanted to be a mother, and mother she became. She wanted to play with her children and dress them up in pretty clothes and care for them and watch them grow, and she did all this, but inside her was still this feeling that she wasn't doing as much as she could do, that she had to work harder. She became very busy and did lots of things, juggling the care of her children in among all this, but whenever she stopped to rest, she couldn't enjoy it because of her guilt.

And as she got older she noticed that a lot of the time she was just plain tired. She tried to tell herself that this was only to be expected after years of hard work but that didn't make much sense to her; after all, she was healthy enough and now there weren't all those children to care for, and she knew she didn't even have to work very hard to have enough to live on. And she started wondering if the tired feeling was something to do with doing the things she felt she should do rather than the things she loved.

The trouble was, she couldn't really think of what she did love. She noticed that many of the things she had done her whole life only felt good because other people admired her for them or because they helped her feel she was being useful. She had spent so much of her life feeling guilty for doing what she wanted that she had forgotten how to want to do things – just for fun.

It was no good telling herself she didn't need to feel guilty about anything because that didn't make the feeling go away at all. And she realised that underneath that guilty feeling she felt very very sad that her mummy had had no time to play with her, and that the best way for her mummy to be pleased with her had been for her to work hard, and even then all she remembered was that she hadn't been quite good enough.

So she started crying, and she cried and cried all her sadness away. And while she cried she imagined that she was sitting on God's lap and God was letting her have this big cry and didn't expect her to be brave and stop crying, but just held her softly all the while. And when she stopped crying, she felt a little better. So then she learned that every time the feeling that she didn't much want to do something came back, the thing that helped her the most was to feel sad about when she was little and she had wanted to play but had felt she should do something useful instead. And then, even though she was quite a big girl now, she sat in God's lap and cried some more.

And do you know what? One day, when she had been playing on her swing and climbing trees and just messing round for fun, she noticed that she didn't feel bad at all! And every day after that, no matter how little 'useful work' she did, she was just happy doing all the things she wanted to do, and finding out about all the other things she liked doing.

She liked: writing stories and poems

singing and dancing

helping things to grow in her garden

helping people to feel better

making things to give away and to keep

and lots more

What do you like doing?

Competitions

I've been one of those people who like to record how my family looks as they grow, for posterity and all that. About once a year we'd go through this drama where I would run around getting very stressed, making sure everyone looked perfect, get to the venue with moments to spare and stand smiling on the outside while, depending on the age of the 'contestants', they displayed a range of faces between forced smile to grimace to downright tears.

I look at these photos periodically. What a good-looking family I used to think, won't they be glad I forced them to do this... But lately I've been noticing other things; how they're wearing what I wanted them to wear, had their hair done just so, but most particularly seeing the pained look behind those smiles or even just the brightness of the smile, designed to 'please mum'.

Yesterday I was at an Irish Dancing competition held locally, drawing children from all over the state. The costumes were truly resplendent, saturated in all kinds of sparkling stones and sequins and embroidery, black velvet and other fabrics in every colour of the rainbow. In the foyer there were some secondhand dresses for sale; I noticed one price tag of $250 and another of $900. (That's not $2.50 and $9.00.) And then there were the ringletted head-dresses, special footwear, socks, stockings and I imagine many other items of which I wasn't even aware, that go in to readying a child for an Irish dancing performance.

Very close to me was a mother adjusting her performing daughter's head-dress while reprimanding the younger daughter who also wanted some attention. I knew exactly why she felt it was so important that her child look good and dance well, important enough to shut down her other child, and I reflected on my own lifetime of anxiety as a parent. And as I watched the children on stage I started to recognise how unloving I too have been.

You see, all the children as far as I could see had either looks of intense concentration or a kind of forced or pleading smile, something they've been told to do, or as if to say to the judge (or parent) 'is this good enough?' A far cry from the look of total absorption and naturalness in movement in doing something one loves, like Billy Elliott in the movie of that name.

While I think my own parents put little conscious pressure on me as a child to take up any activities, I myself was of a generation where one often felt negligent if one's children didn't get all the 'opportunities'. Did I want my kids to explore their potentials? Yes, but I can't deny the component of fear that I would be judged by other parents if I didn't involve them in the many available extracurricular options.

I know with my children what happened was that either they voiced a desire of their own to do something, or they were introduced into some activity that we, as parents, had loved and had varying degrees of success (or failure) in ourselves. And it was often downhill from there for them. Looking back I can see that they often lost interest well before we did, that so much of the drama of 'following their passion' was actually following our own passion through them, and where we felt they might be disappointed at a loss, while we might have said the right words to reassure them, what they probably mostly felt was our own disappointment. And I didn't check back to see what was really going on for them.

I was moved by a woman who left the auditorium for the duration of her daughter's performance, saying to me, perhaps a little sadly, 'she doesn't want me to watch her dance'. I admired her for that. I may have done the same in her position but not without feeling resentful at having put in all the effort I had gone to to get my child to that point, with the expectation that the least she could do to repay me etc etc. And that highlights another aspect; that I am actually using my child for my own gratification. That is not what parenting should be about.

And still the question must be asked: why does the daughter not want her mother to see her? If I truly love what I do and feel loved for who I am, do I care who is looking? Billy Elliott 'didn't care' early on in the movie, reacting with anger to his father's disapproval, but later, when his father eventually saw that his role was to support his son in following his desire, Billy's feeling was of a different kind of 'not caring', that of being oblivious to the judgement of others, of immersing himself in the love of what he did and knowing he was loved for who he was.

And is it human nature to turn everything into a competition? I'm guessing that there are no competitions at all in heaven, that everyone is encouraged and helped to do all they love and none of what they don't love, and no one is measuring the outcome. But here on earth we strive endlessly.

While I don't remember my parents voicing any expectations they had of me, my own need to strive started very early in my childhood. I had to prove myself able at something, or rather I had to counter the feeling in me that 'the world' didn't think I'd amount to much. I had kids who I hoped would 'amount to much' because, to tell the truth, it made me feel good when they achieved. But I didn't look too carefully at the alternative; that I felt bad when they didn't achieve.

And it's no good my saying that I felt bad on their behalf, even though it feels a lot like that. All I'm doing when I feel this way is conveying to them at an unspoken level that they have disappointed me, that they have failed me. And even my realising this only lessens the message they receive a little. The onus, then, is on me to do the hard stuff, admit that my feelings of being judged as a failure are my own, and to feel my own shame and grief.

For me there's more in this whole 'helping my child follow their desires' thing. I haven't talked about other ways in which I've gotten in the way, assuming they did have a desire of their own. I've often felt that it was too much trouble, too much expense (even though I could easily afford it), too much taken from time I wanted to spend on other things. Even though I went through all the motions, when my child feels all this coming from me, small wonder they decide they don't really have the desire anymore; far better to keep mum happy.

And if they're brave enough to persist, one sure-fire way I've learned to turn them away from their desires is to insist on regular practice. But that all comes down to my fear of judgement from others again, my need to look good through my child's achievements as I've already mentioned.

It also occurs to me that as a society we judge our mothers very harshly. I judge, I feel judged. Mothers who do not turn out beautiful well-dressed, well-behaved children receive an awful lot of dark looks and negative projections, and so we continue to live in our own cage of fear of judgement, and turn out children who will inevitably grow up the same unless we can learn to feel our own shame and grief.

I've strayed away from the 'competition' thing a little. I'm reminded of an occasion some years ago when our group of friends was talking of our dreams of the future. 'I don't do dreams' I stated, explaining how I felt it worked much better for my immediate happiness to just enjoy what the day brought with my family rather than hanker for a future where I could fulfil my own dreams. But my friend surprised me with the shock in her reply. 'You must have a dream,' she urged me.

And I reflect on why I've taken that position all my life, why I guard against future disappointment by not allowing myself to dream. Was I taught this as a child? How much do competitions do this to us? Few win and most are disappointed, relegating ourselves to the chronic 'not very good' category. Now there's another weight to carry. It wasn't put there by God; I know this intellectually and look forward to the time when I know it more deeply. God made me 'very good' and will always see me as 'very good'. It strikes me that that is how the Bible begins too doesn't it! God made this and that, sat back and saw that it was good, or something like that. And we are God's greatest creation, we humans, difficult as it is for me to believe that much of the time.

And that's about it from me on competitions. I want to finish with the dancing part of it all. I love any kind of dance. I love the shape of the human body and how it can move. Slow and sinuous or fast and choppy or some other variety, there's always balance and I delight in the human ability to move in so many ways. I don't understand the technicalities of Irish dancing. I see a frenetic succession of feet kicking and tapping and stamping while the arms are held rigid by one's sides and then more jiggling movement of ringlets on the dancer's head. At first I thought that this requirement to hold one's arms still doesn't exactly encourage gay abandon in one's body movements, but a moment later it occurred to me that it would have been just the thing in my teenage years at dances, where I never quite knew what to do with my arms anyway. Short of wrapping them round some unsuspecting Adonis...

And on that odd note I'll stop for now.

Getting Truthful With Myself

It's Rachel's 15^th birthday today and I'm feeling good – so far. I generally never know how I'm going to feel when I wake up but I've come to really value that time because my thoughts and feelings are clearer to me. My emotional gymnastics over 54 years have resulted in quite a knotty ball to be untangled!

One image from this morning is of myself as a large puzzle, maybe 2000 pieces, maybe more, and just now I have a few pieces that actually fit together! And I had this urge to write them down, to hold onto this thought, because I feel hopeful that there is light at the end of this particular tunnel.

What tunnel? Well for 15 years I have been doing something I didn't want to do; it's just that I wasn't truthful to myself about what was going on. And lately, as a result of being a bit more open to feel the bad stuff rather than push it away, I've been coming across these puzzle pieces of what I have always believed to be the truth about myself, and more aware that they are not the truth at all.

Puzzle piece 1: I want to believe that I'm a good mother but deep down I don't feel that way at all. However, as part of my desire to believe this, I give way to demands, I make myself available, I allow unkind things to be said and done to me, and so on. Why?

I very much want approval from others that I'm doing a good job. I have developed a strong need to be constantly reminded that I'm the good guy here, that I'm doing all a mother could do for a child, therefore I must be a good mother – mustn't I?

Puzzle piece 2: I also realised very recently that not only do I want approval, but that I get something out of having the sympathy of others. This was quite a sobering realisation. I saw myself as a person who will go through a great deal of unhappiness with the pay-off being that others feel sorry for me, and if there are no others, well then I have spent huge amounts of time, most of my life perhaps, feeling sorry for myself!

Because life with Rachel has not been a picnic. In her first few years of life she was surrounded by people who mostly delighted in her open and forthright manner, her enthusiasm and joy for life, and who loved to be with her and do things to make her happy. And I can hardly blame her for becoming a person who wanted much. After all, most of her demand was met by a mother who needed to convince herself and the world that she was being the best of mothers. In a way, she became demanding to feed my need to feel that I was 'good' when responding to her.

What I didn't realise was that most of the time, deep down, I didn't want to give her what she wanted. Most of the time I felt caged in my position, but told myself that my desires were not that important and could wait until I had less parental responsibility. I put my role as a parent as being more important than my own desires. (And then I complicated things by trying to juggle my Perfect parent act with being a Perfect Professional as well.)

Until recently I would have said that that is how things should be. I had always wanted to be a parent, and sacrifices must be made when one makes choices. I believed this and the religion in which I grew up encouraged the added belief that one will be rewarded for making these sacrifices in the long term.

Why then, as Rachel grew, did my cage become more and more oppressive even though I encouraged her at all times to be independent? Why have the moments of joy in just being with her so often been eclipsed by the heavy feeling that she, who is the recipient of all my 'good' mothering does not see me in that light at all. In fact she sees me as stupid, easily manipulated, as a servant, and is ashamed of me. And therein is another puzzle piece for me.

Puzzle piece 3: I am afraid of her anger. Years ago I hoped that she would outgrow her demanding treatment of me and her ingratitude but the truth is that it is getting steadily worse. And the truth is that by allowing her to treat me in this way I am giving her no incentive at all to stop. She demands, she gets what she wants. And I have not seen until now that my acquiescence is nothing to do with my being a kind and gentle person who is trying her best to manage a teenager. And we all love to think of teenagers as being difficult in so many ways rather than seeing that the source of the problem has always lain with us.

So, if you've hung in there long enough you'll see that I'm finally getting to the title; I'm realising that for the puzzle pieces to start fitting together I need to tell the truth to myself about what is really going on within me. The cage I am in is actually of my own making. I have put myself there. To open the door and walk out I can say:

“I don't want to.” (accede to this particular demand)

Why?

I have learned from the experience of the last year or two that if I am feeling angry then my refusal to give in is only met by anger in Rachel and I am beginning to understand that her anger is only her self-protection from anger she feels coming from me. But after many attempts at taking my anger elsewhere and giving it full expression I am starting to see that underneath I am actually very fearful. I am afraid of this young woman's rage, of her shutting me out of her life, of her low opinion of me. Was I so terrified of my mother's disapproval and rage? In her dementia she has become legendary for her sudden and powerful rages; are these being unmasked after a lifetime of also 'trying to be a good mother/person' to please God and the ghosts in her head?

The light at the end of my tunnel is this: I have a real feeling of hope that with practice I will become more courageous and quietly walk away when I feel anything is demanded of me. It won't be as easy as it sounds because I will also be challenged to admit, and feel, that I don't really believe myself to be a good mother, I don't want to spend money, I don't want to give up my time, I am really very afraid of the judgement of others, and the Pandora's box that those truths and others open up for me.

But I am also encouraged by the feeling that while Rachel will likely object vigorously and angrily, and will probably feel that I don't love her at all, in the long run she will learn for herself that being demanding is not a very enjoyable way to get through life, and from there hopefully learn that it is possible to fulfill all her desires through much more loving means, both towards herself and others.

And do I love her at all? That depends on my definition. If I define love as giving selflessly, no matter what the cost, as putting her desires before my own, as feeling gratified at her achievements, I suppose I love her a lot. But this is not real love. This is allowing myself to remain inferior, because then the world and I can feel sorry for me. And this is 'loving' her for what she can do, not for the vibrant personality, the previously-mentioned open and forthright manner, the enthusiasm and joy for life that she started off with as a baby.

And I believe that that will become so much more evident as she responds to real 'good parenting', which for me must start with my refusing to accede to demands (as opposed to requests) accompanied by my addressing any emotional issues that arise. I believe that as I do this it will become much more clear to me what real love is and Rachel can at last receive the full quota of what she really wants from me.

Here's another poem from last year:

Love Just Wants to Be

Love does not attempt to make or do

Or work or feed or clothe

Or read a bedtime story

Just to tick the 'quality-time' slot

Love just wants to be.

In love I want to relish every moment

Spent with whom I love

To see the brightness of a smile

The colour and the crinkle of the eyes

The body movements, sometimes graceful

Always though, a living form to love

In love there is no use for time

Each moment an unending joy

Existing with the one I love

No wish to change or modify

No nothing but a fullness in my soul.